為愛走天涯 – sacrifice for love

Love is patient, love is kind. Sounds familiar? I agree, but love is not only bright and happy, often it requires taking a tough path in life. Especially when people in love come from different cultures and are divided by distance that could be counted in thousands of kilometers.

Today I want to share with you our favorite AMWF love stories that changed women’s life and made sacrifices in order to keep the love of their lives. I hope I was able to translate everything correctly, especially the second story was pretty famous so just in case of any mistakes please inform me! 🙂

British girl x Taiwanese man and night market

Amy met her husband in a hostel in Beijing, at that time they both were backpacking in China. She found him really attractive, they talked and exchanged numbers. She calls it love at first sight. Year later they got married and moved together to Taiwan (first he quit his job and went for her to England). She changed her cozy office job to a stand at night market preparing fish and chips and other food. If you want a link to the video about them just click here .
Some people might not see it as really serious life change for her, but I think it takes courage to make such a big step, go out of your comfort zone in your own country, change your profession and take a risk if the idea will be good.

British girl x Chinese husband and a fight for land

Story of this couple was originally posted on Baidu, later it has been modified for many articles so there’s a chance you’ve heart about that couple living in Shandong province. They were living in the house of his grandfather, they had baby on the way, but at the same time government decided they needed their land for construction and gave 3 days to make up their minds. Grandpa didn’t want to leave his land so he and his grandson asked wife to go back to England and give a birth there but she refused. They refused to give the land, even thought she knew she will have many problems because of that, if I understand correctly government refused to issue the birth license (?! no clue about that, so it might be my mistake in a translation). How did the brave girl fight for her husband’s family? She called media, also foreign media, the story got viral and authorities wanted to negotiate. In the end they sold the land for more reasonable price, Joanne gave a birth in China, but from what I read they still struggle because the situation made them go on the ‘black list’ and she needs to give a paper for this, for that, get a paper from this and that institution etc. She fought for her family despite everything, knowing how much trouble it could bring her in future. Later I actually found an article about them in English so if you want to read it click here. You can see the slight difference between the thing I tried to translate and that post, but I guess it all depends who translates it and writes it.

Ukrainian girl x Chinese man and commitment after death

Nadya married her husband when she was 23. He came from Hunan province, but they weren’t poor, they had their family business and 3 sons. Everything was perfect until her husband got liver cancer and died when Nadya was just 32 years old. To make things worse her parents in law cried so much they became blind (some people might argue it’s not possible, but I’m not a doctor to judge it) and got heart problems. Alone with 3 children and 2 adults she needed to take of she decided not to re-marry, even thought she was still young and could have better life she stayed with her in laws, sold the company she couldn’t handle only by herself and just kept working as a bread winner (rice winner?) and a housewife. Every morning she tided her youngest child on her chest, make a breakfast for the family, take older sons to school, go to work, then make groceries, cook, clean, pick the children from school. She worked hard as a translator to send her children once in a while to see her family back in Ukraine. She even made their tiny 40m2 house bigger by adding a loft inside all by herself. Even thought her in-laws suggested her to go back she stay committed to her husband’s family. She won a contest for a ‘beautiful person’ of the city she lived in and I must say she is one of the most beautiful people inside I ever read about. For her no matter how difficult it was she did everything she could and kept her family together. From all the stories this one is my favorite. She was still young, had so many responsibilities. She could easily quit and move on, but she kept the vows. If you want to read more about Nadya click here and here.

Would I say I sacrificed for my husband? Well, I packed my 21.5 years (at that time) of life in one suitcase and a hand carry, I had to fly one week before I even thought I will so I couldn’t say goodbye to my friends. I haven’t seen my parents for almost 1.5 year now, soonest I can see them is later this year. I gave up my school for some period of time, as F-2 visa is forbidden to study or practically do anything entertaining. I became a housewife, only a housewife (no offense to any housewife, I know how hard it can be but I always wanted to work and be a housewife at the same time, cannot get satisfaction from staying at home) – I never thought that would be my life. But would I really call it a sacrifice? I don’t think so. I just followed what my heart told me to do. I sometimes think ‘Oh, maybe I shouldn’t have done that’, but then I take Biscuit with me to the bed, slide under my husbands arms and I know I made a right choice. And I’m pretty sure that those ladies I introduced you today (nor any person in love) don’t think of their actions as sacrifice.

PS My two big announcements! First of all next week you will be able to finally know the story how Sing and I met. Second of all is… my mother in-law got American visa and she will be visiting us for a month! NOOOO. So you can expect a series on blog called ‘Sad Daughter-in-law diary‘ or something, haha.

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25 thoughts on “為愛走天涯 – sacrifice for love”

It’s really sweet to hear about people who “sacrificed” a lot for love.
I’m also on a visitor visa right now (I haven’t been able to get a working spouse visa), so I have to “just” be a housewife – and it’s really hard.
I love working, so moving to Tokyo with my husband was a difficult transition…

Love is worth giving up a good deal for. Mostly my marriage has just involved a lot of risk taking for both of us. Things could have turned out horribly a few times, but we’ve been incredibly fortunate.

I’M in the same situation as Grace (above). In order to let my husband choose the job of his dreams and move to California USA, I had to accept going with him and being a ‘housewife’, thereby abandoning my career. However we have found out recently that he is going to be able to get the next level of visa, that would allow me to not only get a social security number, but get a JOB!

That’s okay, he has always been my high school sweetheart, even over thirty years later.

Green card? Or h4? I think H4 allows to work only if h1b of working will have green card sponsorship or something like that. Sadly my husband is on OPT and since October we will officially have h1b and h4 me as a spouse of working visa but it does not allow me to work, although I can go back to school and after a year on h4 I can get local school fee 🙂 if you live somewhere around east bay it would be great to meet!

Omg, that story about Ukrainian girl is so sad and touching.
Well my story is similar as your. Soon I will also pack my whole life into suitcase, leave my family, not knowing when I will be able to see them again… But the difference is that I will be a working housewife xD’
Can’t wait to read how did you and Sing met!!!

Of course I say I would give up a lot or everything for my wife however we did not get into any situation which would require it…
My wife on the other hand gave up now rather much as we will move to Germany. So she had to quit her job, leave her friends behind and the country she had incredible much luck in. But now she is also happy about it to start new and besides, with our current financial situation we will have a pretty good life there compared to expensive finland

I study Cantonese since we got married, little bit less than that haha. English is one of the choices for foreign languages in Polish schools, but I never really paid much attention (although I should haha), My first English lessons came from the TV – my old TV could only receive Cartoon Network in English so I had no choice haha, but you can easily see it’s not my native language 🙂

The hardest thing for me had nothing to do with my husband being Chinese. But we lived abroad, in the Philippines and Vanuatu, for almost 20 yrs., so I had to give up my career as an elementary school teacher and find something else to do. It took me a long time. Finally I enrolled in an MFA program and studied to become a writer. I only wish I’d thought of it sooner.

I don’t have an exotic love story that crosses over 2 countries. Canada is a pretty huge country..so the sacrifice I made was to leave a full time, well paying job in Toronto, sell my home and move to live with my partner ..where we ended up in Vancouver.

But life is never simple if a woman wishes to pursue her job/career that is related to her education.

Some interesting stories here. I liked the first one. The Ukranian woman is having it very tough..she just is not telling it to the world. She does not want to demoralize her children, that’s why she is trying to keep a brave, strong front. I actually think it’s exhausting/tiring to be continuously strong with several young children.

Hope the British woman and her Chinese husband with their baby work things. Frankly, I think they should just leave China and immigrate elsewhere.

Any mother will tell you that. They will. Of course, I am the oldest of 6, so I saw a lot.

Interesting stories! I also moved to HKG to be with my husband. Is it hard to leave a thriving career and look for a job in this competitive market? NO
But, would I have it any other way? NO
Love and faith makes you much stronger and sure about your decisions and then it is just about doing your bit, being patient and cherishing your daily lives.

What I find really interesting is that almost all the AMWF couples I hear of, it’s the woman who makes the sacrifices and moves for her man. For me, my boyfriend has moved away from his family to live with mine and I don’t think we’d still be in a relationship if he had refused to move because I didn’t want to be so far away from my family again!

Everyone here makes major sacrifices for their partners and now I feel a bit selfish… 0__O

I was reading the article you linked to about the British girl married to the Chinese man with their two kids after being blacklisted… from the article:

“The case was brought to the British Embassy who offered to transport Joanne and her two children back to the UK, however she was afraid for Xu’s safety should he be left behind by himself. ”

Which just shows the love Joanne has for him, but also how spiteful my (British) government are. They say they have raised restrictions, so that one has to earn over 35k a year – but if you read the comments below, you’ll see there’s a British guy who is unemployed when he brought his Chinese wife over, which leads me to believe (along with a story I read in the newspaper a couple of years ago about a British businesswoman whose husband was denied a visa, despite her earning well over the threshold – that my country is – for some agenda only they know of – denying east asian men from living here, particularly if they have children with a white British woman. Yet a white British man with an asian woman… that’s fine apprently, no visa requirements needed. Very suspicious.